Every Secret Thing : A Novel [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Laura Lippman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2003

It is early evening, summer time and hot. Two eleven year old girls, Alice and Ronnie, are on their way home from a swimming party when they happen to see a baby's stroller, with baby girl sleeping inside, left unattended on the top step of a house. Ronnie says to Alice: 'We have to take care of this baby.' But what exactly does she mean? Four days later the body of little Olivia Barnes is discovered in a hut in Baltimore's rambling Leakin Park by a young rookie detective, Nancy Porter. What can have happened in those four days to bring about this appalling crime? The girls are arrested and found guilty. Seven years later Ronnie and Alice, now eighteen, are released from their separate prisons, back into their old neighbourhood where the mother of baby Olivia still lives. Another child goes missing, and Nancy Porter and her partner get the case ...

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this engrossing mystery/suspense stand-alone novel, Lippman, winner of the Edgar, Shamus and Agatha awards for her series featuring likable heroine Tess Monaghan (Baltimore Blues; Charm City; The Last Place) solidifies her position in the upper tier of today's suspense novelists. Two 11-year-old children-good girl Alice Manning and bad girl Ronnie Fuller-wander homeward in Baltimore after being kicked out of a friend's pool party. They discover a baby in an unattended carriage by the front door of a house and steal it away. The reader watches in horror, knowing what will come next. The baby dies, and Alice and Ronnie are imprisoned for seven years. The mystery involves which girl did the killing, and which was the dupe. After release from prison, their blighted lives move inexorably toward further horror and tragedy. Lippman slowly relinquishes the facts of her story, building suspense as she reveals the past. Her well-honed prose is particularly suited to descriptions that impart more than just appearances: "Holly was one of those people who seemed to be put together with higher quality parts than everyone else"; "...there was something menacing in the very fineness of his bones, as if a bigger boy had been boiled down until all that remained was this concentrated bit of rage and bile." With this book, much darker than any in her past series, Lippman shows she is an author willing to take risks in both writing and storytelling. Her deft handling of this disturbing material is sure to increase the breadth of her readership.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Lippman has won just about every mystery writing award there is--the Edgar, the Agatha, the Anthony, the Shamus, and the Nero Wolfe--for her Tess Monaghan series. This is her first stand-alone mystery, one in which the detectives are consigned to bit parts. The fact that the police here do little save go through the motions underscores the fatalistic feeling at the core of this dark domestic tragedy. Lippman writes the kind of opening that should make readers feel they're following helplessly as a nightmare slowly unfolds. Two 10-year-old girls, bounced from a birthday party for bad behavior, discover a baby in a carriage on the sidewalk and deem it necessary to "save" her. Lippman leaves the reader knowing something terrible happened but unsure what it was until the narrative progresses to seven years later, when the two girls are released from prison and return to their homes, six blocks away from the house to which they brought untold grief. The girls have to adjust to a new prison of neighborhood suspicion. Then, as the girls make somewhat of a new life, children start disappearing, and then reappearing, until one toddler is well and truly missing. Lippman doesn't write a standard whodunit here but plays with reader expectations of what should happen next. A startling page-turner. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• ISBN-10: 0060506679
• ASIN: B0002TX57Y
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,034,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working fulltime and published seven books about "accidental PI" Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001. Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor's Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association. Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade. After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light. Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Stand-Alone Mystery, September 16, 2003

By 

Craig Larson (Maple Grove, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Every Secret Thing: A Novel (Hardcover)

I just finished Laura Lippman's latest (how's that for alliteration?) and what a stunner! _Every Secret Thing_ is a stand-alone novel, not part of the Tess Monaghan series, and it's more of a "portrait of a community" sort of a book than an outright mystery, although it certainly has a strong mystery driving the plot. I'd hesitate to say "breakout book" because I think she broke out long ago, but as I read, I couldn't help but compare the experience to that of reading Dennis Lehane's _Mystic River_, which I still firmly believe is one of the best American books of the last ten years. And I do think that _Every Secret Thing_ is on par with that book.



The story is narrated from multiple viewpoints, including those of a pair of now teenage girls, just released from juvenile detention after serving seven-year sentences for their parts in the kidnapping and death of a baby, the granddaughter of a locally-famous black judge. Ronnie Fuller and Alice Manning have had their lives irrevocably changed, and when another child of mixed race disappears soon after their return home, the girls become prime suspects, after their names are leaked to the press and to the police. At first, we feel sympathetic toward poor Alice, the "good" girl whose life was ruined by the inexplicable actions of the "bad" Ronnie, but as the story goes on, our sympathies are drawn more and more to Ronnie as the secrets of what happened seven years before, and what is happening now, are revealed.



Set in Baltimore, the story is as much about developing character studies of the girls, their families, the police, the press, and so forth, as it is about solving the mystery. The book also presents a portrait of the racism and divisions inherent in society, not just black vs. white, but rich vs. poor, and so on. There are great passages about the struggles faced by homicide detective Nancy Porter, who found the dead baby many years ago and who is now assigned to the new investigation, that are worthy of _Homicide: Life on the Street_ or _The Wire_. Lippman draws deft portraits of both Sharon Kerpelman, the public defender who feels she failed Alice in the earlier case, and Mira Jenkins, the reporter who sees this story as her chance to "move downtown." And Cynthia Barnes, the mother of the murdered baby, is a fully-shaded character who sees the possibility to get some sort of revenge on the girls, who she feels should have been tried as adults.



This is a gripping story, full of tension and emotion. It has moments of sadness and moments of humor. It's a great book by a great writer and I'd be surprised if it isn't nominated for the major awards in the field this year. Very highly recommended.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Totally blown away, September 4, 2003

By 

Avid Mystery Reader (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Every Secret Thing: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Last Place knocked my socks off as the best Lippman book yet. In comparison to Every Secret Thing, it's Lippman's second best book (and best Tess). Every Secret Thing is a whole new level of writing for Lippman. Every Secret Thing is dark, exploring, questioning, and powerful. Some Tess fans may be disappointed by the tone of this book -- it may be darker than they prefer -- but they won't be disappointed by the quality of writing or the story. It's not Tess, *and* it is still very, very good. I thought about this book for a long time after I read it.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Was Not Left With a Good Feeling, November 25, 2008

By 

Laura Christine "Jewel of Zion" (Toledo, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Every Secret Thing (Mass Market Paperback)

Ms. Lippman is a talented writer that is capable of taking you along for a ride.

I appreciate a good plot twist as much as anyone, but when this novel ended I felt like I had been duped. (I am not the type that necessarily tries to solve the mystery as I am reading, so yes, it is possible to suck me in.)

It seems that Ms. Lippman used her talent to play on the reader's sympathies. I walked away from this book feeling like I had rooted for the wrong team.

While I won't deny the author's skills as a novelist, this was not a feel-good experience.

On a constructive note, I would suggest Lippman's "What the Dead Know". While WTDK is not entirely uplifting, it is a twisting novel that succeeds in creating some sense of resolution and reconciliation in the end.